Drama and Theatre: How They Changed Their Vagabond Past and Became Educational and Clinical Specialisms

Abstract

Dramatic performance through rituals and ceremonies has an ancient and respected past, for celebration, status confirmation, and healing. This is particularly so in non-Western cultures. However, in the United Kingdom and the West, it has had a chequered development, and actors for many years were considered vagabonds and of questionable reputation. Initiatives in drama and theatre in education enabled the development of drama as a therapy. However, there was less emphasis on the art form, as in other arts therapies, and more focus on techniques. Performance for healing in dramatherapy slowly became eroded. Parallel to drama as a therapy, psychodrama slowly emerged as an approach to therapeutic applications of role-play. Attention is drawn to the very early dramatic expression, through neuro-dramatic-play, commencing during pregnancy.

Dramatherapy: How it Grew as the Filling in a Developmental Sandwich!

Drama, ritual, role-play, theatre, séance, ceremony, enactment, performance, and presentation, whichever term we choose to use, have all contributed to ancient and modern healing practices: stretching back into pre-history, on the one hand, and becoming established within clinical and educational Western European practice, on the other. There is some evidence from cave paintings of dramatic rituals being performed in masks, as described by Drury. ¹ Drama and theatre for healing seem to have existed in one form or another since ancient times. Nevertheless, in the United Kingdom and parts of Western Europe, they went through an extended period with a very shady reputation. Actors were classed with vagabonds.

Dramatic rituals and performances are about consciousness raising and empowerment toward the important issues of the day. Maybe it is fertility of crops or people, the success of the business, or successful relationships, or assuaging the wrath of the gods.

“Through acting, people are empowered to act.” ²

Against this background of theatre history, it is not surprising that drama was re-named and re-defined to suit modern audiences as dramatherapy. The first person, certainly in the United Kingdom, to put the two words drama and therapy together is Peter Slade in “Child Drama,” a revolutionary book about drama with young children. ³

Others were also writing about the benefits of drama in education, including Brian Way ⁴ and Dorothy Heathcote and Gavin Bolton, who pioneered the empowering drama technique of “mantle of the expert.” ⁵

Of course, Montessori, earlier in the last century, encouraged dramatic play, but emphasised it must be reality based and not fantasy play, so no dragons or witches or superheroes, but play that imitated life. She distinguished between imaginative play and fantasy play. She said, “Play is the work of the child” and suggested that play should be “voluntary, enjoyable, purposeful and spontaneous.” ⁶

While many people were encouraging theatre and drama in education, it was Moreno who pioneered from the clinical world the theory and practice of psychodrama. He said, “Psychodrama is the scientific exploration of truth through dramatic method” (quoted in Fox ⁷ ). Although some Western dramatherapists also train in psychodrama, the roots of dramatherapy lie in theatre in education and Peter Slade’s early work.

Gradually, various initiatives developed in the United States and Europe, but it was not until the 1970s that moves began to enable dramatherapy to become a recognised practice and profession that would eventually lead to state registration. There were two main pathways: from the Sesame Institute, which emphasised drama and movement in therapy, with a strong grounding in Jungian theory, and the former Institute of Dramatherapy, which believed in a theatre model and an emphasis on performance. This model was based on the developmental paradigm “Embodiment-Projection-Role” EPR.

The registration body said that there could be only one application, so any organisations running dramatherapy courses had to combine together. Since all the dramatherapy courses were being run in non-university colleges, it was important for them to also gain post-graduate accreditation. It was a time of immense activity as well as rivalry between the different arts therapies.

Although art therapy and music therapy insisted on a certain level of competence in the art forms of music and art, it was different for dramatherapy. When I had first created the training at Hertfordshire College in St Albans, applicants had to have a basic drama training or equivalent, as well as going to the theatre on a regular basis and keeping a therapeutic theatre journal. Gradually this became eroded, and the training transformed more or less into being drama orientated rather than theatre focused. Although some acknowledgment is given to theatre in modern training, the emphasis is on drama, the active enactment of a scene, a dilemma, a theme, often using symbolism and nonverbal communication.

With the lack of a theatre and performance model, dramatherapy has become closer and closer to psychodrama. I would not be surprised for it to combine sometime in the future: dramatherapy and psychodrama.

When I was designing and implementing the training, I also felt it was very important for practitioners to have a working understanding of social anthropology to understand cross-cultural themes and rituals, but it has now become mainly an optional extra. We need to understand ritual within the context of culture and dramatic presentation. It can be used in a preventive or curative practice and accompanies the belief system of the society. However, we live in an era that emphasises psychotherapy rather than socio-therapy: the individual over the group.

Since two core principles were no longer at the heart of dramatherapy—theatre and ritual—I decided it was time for me to step back and re-appraise where it was all going, and indeed where I was going!

Neuro-Dramatic-Play and Attachment

Following my doctoral research with the Temiar people in the rain forests of Malaysia, I became increasingly interested in the early life of infants and the idea of “dramatic development.” ⁸ Fortunately, my work at the Royal London Hospital, in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, gave me the opportunity for observations during pregnancy and the first year of life. This, together with my Temiar observations, led me to the realisation that there were some serious gaps in the EPR model I had researched and created. Whereas the embodiment stage included small and gross body movement, it did not include sensory play. Nor did it give sufficient focus to rhythmic play, commencing from early heartbeats and growing into chants, clapping games, and “dancing on the lap.”

Without realising it, I had been cutting off the EPR development from their roots in early play and attachment. Basically, I had been pioneering a model that already assumed a playful beginning!

It was time to take stock of what I had learned from the Temiars and increase my observations of early child development. ⁹ The result was neuro-dramatic-play (NDP), with a focus on water, rhythmic, messy, and dramatic (interactive) play. NDP is where drama and theatre and therefore dramatherapy begin!

Water Play

Before they are born, babies have a nine-month relationship with water. They grow and develop in slimy water until that moment when the water breaks and the birth process begins. Unless they have been dunked in water to make them breathe, babies usually have positive relationship with water, especially if they are born in a birthing pool. Splashing and pouring and many other activities are enjoyed in water play. No wonder Czech and other cultures created the Vodnik, the mythical water creature that tries to snatch children’s souls, as a way of scaring children away from water!

Rhythmic Play

The circadian rhythm is our 24-hour biological clock to which babies need to adjust in the early weeks: differentiating light and dark and night and day. It has been discovered that breast milk reflects this too, having more stimulating hormones in the morning and more calming ones in the evening!

Our earliest rhythm is our heartbeat and the heartbeat of our mothers, and small babies will change their own heart beat to their mother’s when held against the left shoulder.

We have a natural response to move in a rhythmic way whether marching, skipping, or dancing. It is difficult to move against a rhythm—just as it is hard to intentionally sing out of tune!

Mothers and babies spontaneously rock together, helped in the olden days with rocking chairs and cradles. Rocking is soothing and predictable, originating in the womb when a baby feels rocked in water when the mother moves.

Most babies will dance on the lap to singing and music, from about six months old. This demonstrates how rhythm through dance and music is intrinsic and primary to human development.

Nursery rhymes, action songs, and poetry are all rhythmic forms, which we can speak, sing, and dance—if you need to learn a poem or even a shopping list, try saying it while you move in a rhythm, such as marching or skipping.

Rhythms vary cross culturally, and it is important as therapists and teachers that we understand this and make adjustments for contrasting learning.

Messy Play

Babies are born in mess! Childbirth itself is slimy, sticky, and watery, and it follows on nine months of being in the dark, in water that has a slight texture of slipperiness. Fortunately, these days doctors and nurses are less in a hurry to “wash and weigh” and place babies on their mother’s chests where they can still sense their mother’s heartbeat and have skin-to-skin contact. Washing and cutting of the cord are delayed and babies can feel secure in their mother’s arms (the second circle of attachment, the first being the womb itself). The first year of life has a lot of mess: dribbling breast milk, sticky eating, and bubbles and splashing in the bath, for example. And from mess gradually comes form. Out of mud comes mud pies!

All children need to play, especially to be messy in their playing! Toys and dressing up are great, but if children are to learn to create form, build, or model, they also need to “splodge and splash, rip and tear, pour and squeeze …” ¹⁰ Out of the chaos, they create order and experience a myriad of physical actions and coordination, as well as most of their senses. Creating form can lead to monsters, the dark shadowy side that can be controlling or controlled. Children can communicate their fears and nightmares through monster play. They give form to wafting and startling images that can feel overwhelming. It is important that adults do not dismiss the child’s fears about monsters: it can be very harmful to small children. The actual feelings of the child are being dismissed. A child’s talk of a monster may be a first step to disclosing monstrous behavior, such as sexual abuse or physical violence or bullying.

Teachers and carers, as well as parents, have initial reactions of wiping and cleaning up, and wet wipes feature heavily on people’s shopping lists! There are adults who are averse to mess and wet textures, even avoiding wet contact in training courses! We find that as societies have become more sanitised, developmental stages can get overlooked. Cleanliness is considered a sign of civilisation, which has certainly been exploited by the global manufacturing world. However, basic hygiene is very different from sanitised living.

It is still highlighted in current practice to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus: we have to sterilise the toys we work with, or have a personal set of toys for each child. Surfaces and door handles need to be bleached and floor surface appropriately cleaned.

However, if we allow and encourage children to play, we give the most important contribution to their growth and development. Children need a variety of play: materials, location, companions. Most play involves embodiment and engages us physically as well as mentally, that is, the body and the brain.

The following are some broad play headings that we also need to be mindful of—all these forms of play need to be present in the early years. Play is learning and development and will lead into other learnings. It serves as a foundation for physical, mental, and spiritual growth.

Outdoor Play: It includes all the different play elements: messy, physical, challenging, curious, interactive, solitary. Children need to be able to explore and construct. In outdoor play, ¹¹ children become attuned to the rhythms of nature, the cycle of life, and the balance between self and environment. They become aware of the bigger world.

More Rhythmic Play: We are imbued with rhythm from our conception as we float in slimy water and are rocked whenever our mothers move. We are aware of our own heartbeat and the heartbeat of our mothers. We experience music before we are born and can recognise the same music after we are born. Rhythm is important in soothing after meltdown or shock.

More Messy Play: The adult and child, or the child alone, play with clay, mud, finger paints, pastry, flour and water, lotions and potions. Ensure there is floor covering and that the rules for containing the mess are clearly explained and agreed. Maybe the activities can include real cooking as well as pretend cooking. All children enjoy pretend cooking and serving meals to other children or their toys or accompanying adults. This is not only imaginative play; it is also rehearsing balance, coordination, and social play.

Interactive Play (or Dramatic Play): You and the child interact with each other through the play, such as Pooh sticks, echo play (adult and child echo each other’s sounds, words, or gestures), role-play (playing simple parts in stories, rhymes, sometimes with dressing up), finger games (“This Little Piggy Went to Market,” “Round and Round the Garden”), and hide and seek.

Hide and Seek: For many children the most important thing about hide and seek is that they are found! This simple game is reassuring for children who may have suffered abuse or abandonment. The message is “I am important enough to be found!” Many children coming to therapeutic play ask to play hide and seek, many times. Usually, if children want to repeat a game over and over again, they are seeking safety, predictability, the known and not the unknown. ²

Exploratory Play: Children are allowed and encouraged to explore, without adult interference or direction. This can be a piece of wild garden or somewhere in the woods or some rocks and pools at the sea-side or grandma’s button box or a pile of cardboard boxes. Remember that it is important for self-direction, curiosity, and exploration to be a part of all playing.

Brain Play: The adult and the child play board and card games, chess, and guessing games (this type of play belongs to projective play, but it may be a safe starting point for anxious children).

All these forms of play create a balance between order and disorder, as we seek safety but need to develop and discover. And all these forms of play need to be encouraged during the early years. ¹²

Having established that dramatic play is the forerunner of drama and theatre, I was now asking myself how we could understand the significance of theatre performance and whether its emergence could be observed.

Mothers talk to their unborn children during pregnancy and will sometimes “role-reverse”: talk to the child and then answer themselves as if they are the child. At birth there is that significant few hours where mothers and babies try to imitate each other’s expressions (facially and vocally). Mother and child are imitating each other, and mimicry is the beginning of theatre. Our dramatic development includes the capacity to role reverse or play “as if” we are the other. This also enables us to show empathy.

When babies “dance” on the adult’s lap, they are beginning to get a sense of performance (from about six months). The late Richard Courtney ¹³ observed that the special moment when an infant began to imitate someone else occurs at 10 months. From then on, we are getting glimpses of performance, imitation of story characters, creating voices for dolls and animal toys. However, it is rarely a sustained performance until six or seven years old. There seems to be a shift from dramatic play to drama “for real”; there is more sustained enactment and a growing critical awareness.

I have termed this “Theatre of Resilience (ToR).” Through growing performance skills, people (children and adults) are able to explore a character and maybe a scene, safely, keeping their own emotions intact. Nevertheless, this exploration makes an impact on the inner life of the participant, which results in changes and insight. The exploration of “other,” paradoxically, allows understanding and change of the self.

NDP, EPR, and ToR can now be integrated into a working model of early child development based on drama and theatre: enactment and performance. This forms the basis of the art form of “Theatre Arts,” which can be applied preventatively or curatively. This model can be adapted for all age groups, with appropriate adjustment of contents. As dramatherapy it can include application with those with developmental delay, post-trauma impact, autistic spectrum issues, behavioral challenges, and disrupted attachments.

NDP is relevant in education, therapy, and clinical application as well as being appropriate for creative parenting and preventative work in school-space and community. Its flexibility means it can be adapted for individual, family, or group work.

As we become more aware of the process of the drama and theatre on our clients, and indeed on ourselves, our realisation of its impact on attachment becomes apparent. It can be quite startling to observe that so many plays, stories, epics, rituals, celebrations, and more are about individual or social attachments. ¹⁰

Attachment-Based Play

There is a lot of literature on the subject of attachment, and most of it focuses on the early bonding between mothers and babies (including Jennings ⁹ ). Our primary attachment is usually to whoever cares for us after birth, which is usually the person who gave birth to us. We need to acknowledge the attachment that forms during pregnancy. This may be confused if we were abandoned or handed over too early to a child minder or neglected or abused or were born from a surrogate mother. Our birth mothers may have given birth to us on behalf of someone else, or we may be adopted very soon after birth. Over the years there are many, many secondary attachments that develop, some of which are temporary, others that last years, and some indeed last for a lifetime. ⁹

Loss or estrangement of mothers is a major cause of grief and distress, not only for babies and small children but also for individuals at any age. We become attached to pets, places, our dwellings, gifts, inherited objects, and toys. We also become attached to our jobs and the colleagues with whom we work, which is why sudden redundancy can be traumatic. We join in rituals that emphasise our bond with others or acknowledge grief at our losses.

Older people experience feelings of sadness and loss of attachment, when they make a transition into a home for older people, and have to leave so many things behind them. They may be leaving a home they have lived in for many, many years. Some care homes do not encourage individuality, and bedspreads and towels can be the same color. Children and adults can become institutionalised if their own individual attachment needs are not considered, especially if there is an insistence that “we all do things together.”

Certain addictive conditions can be seen as a distorted attachment, including eating issues and self-harming. The connection between addiction and attachment needs research and exploration. ¹⁴

The most important aspects of attachment-based play are how it can be contained within circles and also manifest through water, messy, and rhythmic play. As I said earlier, they form both the security and the exploration. The three attachment circles in NDP are the circle of the womb, the circle of the mother’s arms, and the circle of her “fine-tuning”; we can observe this last circle when mothers will wake in the night, five minutes before the baby wakes. She becomes attuned to the rhythm of the baby.

Although NDP focuses on pre-birth and early weeks, it is important to constantly remember that it can be applied with older children, teenagers, ¹⁵ and adults if there has been developmental delay or attachment issues or sudden change or loss.

In conclusion we could say that in dramatherapy, we need to acknowledge its early roots in play, especially dramatic play, and that it is attachment based. Rather than believe drama and theatre and dramatherapy can be applied to address attachment issues, we could consider that attachment “is the drama.”

Then, everything that becomes enacted either in performance or in everyday life is connected to the attachment process and can be resolved through an attachment-based intervention. I am closing this piece of writing with a huge statement, and perhaps it should be the subject of a book!

The following is an example of an attachment story about two friends who are very different but have found a way to be friends. The example gives ways in which we could apply the story therapeutically or educationally, or just to enjoy!

Moose and Mouse Get Muddy!

 It had been raining and the path by the pine woods was very muddy and there were big puddles. Moose said, “My hooves and legs are getting very muddy! If the mud gets any deeper, I shall get stuck and not be able to move!” ¹

 “Oh, don’t get stuck cos I will get stuck with you,” said Mouse, who was in her usual place on the crown of Moose’s head, in between his antlers.

 “You stay where you are,” said Moose, “and I will get us away from the mud.” Moose continued to walk along the path, a little more slowly now as the mud was sticking to his hooves. However, Mouse’s private thought was that she would love to play with some mud!

 The path became a bit drier, and Mouse said to Moose that she wanted to come on the ground for a little time. Moose stopped and Mouse ran down his shoulder and leg, and she climbed over the mud on his hoof.

 She ran over to a small puddle that was quite muddy and began to splash in the water. What fun! Moose smiled at his little friend’s happiness. He watched as she pressed her feet in the mud and splashed the water with her tail.

 “Time for washing I think,” said Moose, “we both need to get rid of the mud!” “My feet are so heavy I can hardly walk,” said Mouse. Mouse climbed with difficulty on to Moose’s back, and he walked slowly forward to a small lake, called the Small Water. “This is where we can get rid of all the mud and play with the water!”

 Mouse climbed down again, and she walked to the edge of the Small Water, and paddled in the shallows and splashed the water over her back. The mud soon came off her feet and fur. Moose walked slowly into the water and splashed some water over his back. Then he walked deeper until all his back was covered; he then turned and came back to the shore. He shook himself and water sprayed everywhere! “Stop it Moose, I’m getting drenched,” squealed Mouse.

 So, Moose and Mouse had fun with the mud and the water, lots of water and lots of messy mud!

Exploration of the story:

Walk with very heavy feet as if they are muddy.

Stamp your feet to get rid of the mud, then run around

Pretend you are Moose and you are walking very carefully because Mouse is on your head.

Pretend you are Mouse and you are tiny, but you are running very fast!

Make a very muddy picture with crayons or finger paints.

Draw and color Moose and Mouse and the water.

With a partner, show Moose and Mouse playing in the mud and then splashing in the water.

Find an opportunity to play outdoors in water and mud—listen to all the squelchy sounds.

Have fun.